


Waking Nightmare

by MidknightMasquerade



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Ambiguous Father of Kieran, Ambiguous Relationships, Canon Compliant, Dreams and Nightmares, Eluvians, Family Bonding, Gen, Insomnia, Mid-Canon, Missing Scene, Mother-Son Relationship, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Dragon Age: Origins, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Crossroads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 07:56:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16404389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidknightMasquerade/pseuds/MidknightMasquerade
Summary: Here, in a pocket between the planes, mother and son could forget the fears of their former world. Morrigan could discard her demons: impassioned templars, forsaken mothers, fathers who left their wife and child without sanctuary. All abandoned in a land beyond the Eluvians.But Kieran could not forget what greeted him when his mind drifted into oblivion.Morrigan comforts her insomniac son the night before their departure, out from the temporary protection of the Crossroads and into a world even worse than Kieran's nightmares could predict.





	Waking Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> I swore to myself that I would complete the Landsmeet tonight. Instead, my mind decided to imagine some bittersweet, inter-Eluvian mother-son bonding time. A fair trade, I suppose?

One last night in the comfort of the Crossroads. One last night until their return to reality. One last night before the horrors of their homeland beckoned them back to a place of apostates and corrupt gods and children who deserved better.

One night left, and yet Kieran remains restless.

Her son shifts beneath her, racked by the chilled touch of a spectral hand. Morrigan knows not the ghosts that haunt her child’s sleep, but she understands the devastation left in their wake all too well. Cold sweats, whispered pleas, a harrowing scream in the stillness of night. Even awake, Kieran could not concentrate. He too often lost his thoughts, his words ( _and one day_ , she fears, _he will have lost his mind, too_ ) to the midnight monsters.

For a time, before Urthemiel’s essence reawakened, Kieran and Morrigan knew peace. A first, perhaps, for an apostate like her. Here, in a pocket between the planes, mother and son could forget the fears of their former world.

Or at least, one of them could.

Morrigan could discard her demons: impassioned templars, forsaken mothers, fathers who left their wife and child without sanctuary. All abandoned in a land beyond the Eluvians.

But Kieran could not forget what greeted him when his mind drifted into oblivion. Urthemiel did not await him outside the world of mirrors. The old dragon welcomed his unwilling vessel when the moons hung high in the skies.

Every night, Kieran remembers the futility of resisting the dream dragon’s call.  
Every morning, Morrigan remembers how helpless she is against invisible enemies.

To an average boy, a whisper of empowered words would whisk him away to a world of peaceful sleep. But not her son, no. Such pleasantries ever evaded his desperate grasp. Even magic could not cure a corrupt soul.

But Morrigan could not bring herself to blame her boy. She could not blame him when he stole her from slumber with a shriek. She could not blame him when his tears had stained her every shirt. She could not blame him now, as the night terrors stirred him to rising once more.

“More dreams?” Morrigan cards a hand through rest-tangled locks.

Kieran nods wordlessly. Glassy eyes blink warily, momentarily unaware of their surroundings. Even in uncertain silence, Kieran curls further into her form. 

Morrigan draws him deeper into her embrace, into what meager protection she can provide him while he still stands in the land of the living. “Perhaps you ought to talk about them?”

Every night she asks, and every night he refuses. Instead, his eyes stare off beyond the twisted cliffs of the Crossroads. Morrigan always wonders what he watches out there, in a world she could not herself see. _Spirits? Demons? A world without either?_

Kieran hugs his knees to his chest. “...you wouldn’t understand.”

Morrigan opens her mouth to respond, to reprimand. How dare he presume that of her! Yet in a moment, her indignation subsides, swallowed by a mournful admission: she did not understand. How could she? No Old God owned her soul! Morrigan could imagine at most, but never comprehend.

And so, for once, she relents.

“No, perhaps I would not.” Morrigan reaches forward, desperate to touch him, hold him, draw him inward once more...and then stops, unsure. Forcing herself upon him would do less harm than Flemeth enforcing her will upon her daughter. And Morrigan refused to become her mother. “Then again, ‘tis not necessary that I do. I understand fear as well as anyone - how to cause it and cure it. Surely silence would do you no better than going back to bed.”

Kieran leans back, nestling into the fortress of once-withdrawn arms. Safe inside the shelter of her hands, the spirits could not reach him. Or so she told him. “I don’t want to do either.”

“Nor do I,” Morrigan says, “but you will wish you had rested now come tomorrow.”

He huffs a sigh. “Fine.” For a moment, silence falls over them like a blanket, tucking them into its comfortable embrace. Morrigan assumes she has won. “...I will if you will.”

“Rest?” Morrigan clicks her tongue. “I do not need to sleep. Little boys who bargain with their mothers after bedtime, however, do indeed.”

“Not rest,” Kieran protests, “talk!”

“And what is it you would like me to talk about, exactly?”

Kieran thinks on this for a moment. Oversized front teeth nibble on his bottom lip - an old habit Morrigan has scolded him for half a dozen times. She has not the energy to stop him now, however. Then, a gasp escapes from gnawed lips, and Morrigan realizes too late the dangerous power she has granted her child.

“I want to know who my father is.”

A hiss escapes her lips before she can suppress her surprise. Kieran, thank the Maker, shows no sign of flinching. _Stubborn_ , she thinks, _just like me. Just like...him._

Morrigan always wondered when the time would come when her child wished to uncover his father’s identity. Secrets only stay restrained for so long, after all. Despite Morrigan’s best efforts, Kieran’s inquisitive nature had throughout the years sniffed out more than she cared to admit.

Were she to speak in earnest, she would need to choose her words with the utmost care. Morrigan had prepared this speech as he slept so many times it almost spilled out of her come morning. Every word, every inflection, every cadence had been practiced to perfection.

But now, staring at her child’s face ( _her lover’s face_ , she thinks, _he always had his father’s features_ ), she finds she has forgotten all but the fact that he might never know of his father without her help.

What would be worse, she wonders: never knowing of him, never meeting him at all, or meeting him at long last only to find your wildest fantasies failed to satisfy your yearnings?

“Do you really want to know?”

Kieran nods. His eyes shine with the fragile innocence of youth, the naivety of one who does not the severity of what they have asked for.

Morrigan steels her shivering heart. She had faced demons. She had faced darkspawn. She had faced dragons, for Maker’s sake! Still, no prior danger could compare to the nightmare she now faced.

But it is too late to turn back now.

“Fine, Kieran. If you wish to know, I will tell you.” Kieran would have cheered, had Morrigan not held up a finger first. “But you must promise me that, once I have told you this story, you will tell Mother of your dreams - all of them! And then you and I will rest. I refuse to have you whining about a nap while we wander through Maker knows where come morning.”

In place of a spoken pledge, Kieran holds out his pinky. Morrigan rolls her eyes - even the soul of an ancient dragon could not rid her child of such immature gestures - but does not resist. With their fingers intertwined, their contact becomes official.

“Once upon a time,” Morrigan begins, “I met a good man...”

And so, Morrigan spills the secrets of her long-sealed heart to a son who longed to hear them. She spins the tale of an unexpectedly decent man amongst the Wardens, of a hero the world never knew it needed, of a man who saved them and damned them all at once.

Kieran hangs on every word, a prey to the web she wove for him. He interjects only to ask for clarification when she finds she has strayed from the truth. She, in turn, indulges his request to extrapolate the battle scenes, glosses over their endless escapades through the Deep Roads, and ignores the truth of the Ritual entirely. But Kieran seems content, much as any prey when first trapped in the spider’s web. 

_How long can he remain in this web until the truth eats him alive, I wonder?_

As Morrigan concludes her confession, Kieran keeps his promise. Mysterious omens, ancient terrors, prophecies of the apocalypse - all actors in his nightly theatrics. The truth he speaks comes no easier to swallow than his mother’s - and just as mysterious. Even in his honesty, he remains the mirror image of his mother.

As his words dwindle to a whisper, Kieran strains against the temptations of sleep. Exhaustion came to claim its next victim despite their efforts against its irresistible tug.

“Rest, love.” Morrigan presses her lips to the top of his head. “Mother will not let anything touch you. Not in here, in your dreams, or in the world we walk into tomorrow.”

At her urging, Kieran submits to slumber’s enticement. “G’night, Mother.”

“Sweet dreams, my child.”

Morrigan does not sleep, not when faced with the reality of what would await them when the dawn came. For beyond their world of mirrored dreams, lay a realm of nightmares incarnate. A world where mothers could not protect their sons from themselves.

**Author's Note:**

> For those wondering, Kieran's father is deliberately left ambiguous. I purposely put in a clue that could point towards each potential candidate, but any that you would like to imagine would suffice! Feel free to mention your personal favorite parent for our favorite dragon-possessed son in the comments.
> 
> Also, apologies for the present tense. Typically, I only write in past tense, but for whatever reason, it felt wrong to do so this time.


End file.
